Why abstraction today? It has been argued that since the invention of abstraction in the early 20th century it never went away. This would explain why, at least from the point of view of 1996, there have been no neo-abstract movements since the 1960s.1 Regardless, abstraction has remained out of sight for quite a while. Having thus been obscured, abstraction can easily appear as an obsolete general phenomenon and redundant artistic tool. However, at this point in time there are several reasons for returning to this familiar trope.